Here’s a comment hoist from a comment Anne (On an e-journey with generation Y) left on this blog entry I wrote…yesterday:

I remember when I first attended online sessions with the USA, I could not believe all the chat that went on in the back channel. However, now that I am used to it and understand what it is all about, I am one of the best back channel chatters. Educationalists take a while to adjust, but when they do, they will embrace the new technology. The next issue comes with appropriate behaviour in online sessions and online conferences.

Last week there were complaints about people grafitti -ing the white board in elluminate when the presenter had put up wonderful artwork on it for discussion and display. Were those teachers ‘playing’ with elluminate, or showing disrespect by scribbling over the screen. Maybe we do need a code of conduct for online sessions.

However, as to the behaviour at f2f conferences, it is the conversations that go on behind the scenes, that have the ability to add depth to the presentations and share with those who cannot be present that will become obligatory with time.

Once we get folks to embrace technology for learning, leading and teaching, Anne suggests that it’s perhaps about learning to be appropriate, to use those technologies appropriately. Perhaps, one of the reasons our learning of new technologies fails to involve appropriate behavior is that we don’t model or respect technology in the very institutions of learning–our schools–where it should be taught.

As Anne points out, it is about the conversations, the real life discussion as we learn that is important. So, to those of us who fail to embrace technology as the way for learning and leading, let’s remember that if we fail to learn and model, our children will have no one to guide them, no one to learn from than each other.

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